by Kevin Ashman
‘If what you say is true, Kraiach, then my people have done you a great wrong’ he said eventually.
Kraiach looked away into the distance.
‘It was in the long ago. There is no debt,’
‘Kraiach, I must ask, how do you know this is true?’ asked Golau.
‘The stories are passed down through our line. Your kind did not survive in this place, so there was no one to tell the stories or carry on their ways. After the ice went, you returned and once again, you have lived in times of plenty for many grandfathers. When the ice once more covers this land, some will fall back on the old ways, and once again, Two-foot will hunt Two-foot. This must not happen again. The Mwrllwch are few, and alone we will not survive the next cold, but neither will you. On our own, our people will die. Together, we may have a chance.’
‘You say this, Kraiach, yet there is one great difference. You still hunt Two-feet for meat.’
‘The Mwrllwch have survived longer than all,’ he responded. ‘We do not hunt Two-feet for food, but believe that once the spirit has gone to the sun, it leaves only the shell. When times are hard, we take the flesh of the dead.’
‘Even your own?’
‘Even our own!’
‘I cannot do such a thing, Kraiach, how can I take the flesh of another man?’
‘Think only of your son, Golau’ said Kraiach. ‘While you live he has a chance, and if it means you have to take the flesh of the Baal, then that is what you must do.’
Golau had fallen silent. He was in turmoil; he would do anything to save his son, but eating the flesh of another being repulsed him. He fretted in silence, wrestling with his conscience and walked away to sit in solitude as he pondered the horrendous conversation, approaching Kraiach again just before dark.
‘Kraiach,’ he said, ‘The sin is done and cannot be undone. We will never walk in the fields of the Sun-god because of this. It is too late for us so I will live for my son. If I must eat the flesh of Baal, Mwrllwch or Fire-clan, so be it. I will stay alive for his sake.’
Kraiach nodded quietly. These people had strange beliefs.
‘Also, I cannot be held responsible for the deeds of my ancestors. They are gone and I know not what hearth their spirits sit at. It is a thing for the Shaman. ’
‘They did what was necessary to survive, as must we,’ answered Kraiach.
‘But I do know this,’ continued Golau coldly, his eyes steely as they stared at Kraiach,
‘you must not tell Gafr or Afon of the cursed meat they eat or the tale of our ancestors. This is my burden and they must not know what you have told. They risk their lives on a task that is not of their making and suffer great danger for the sake of my son and others of the clan. They know they may die, but they also know that if they do, they will live in paradise forever. I will not take this away from them.’
Kraiach nodded.
‘And if they ask?’
‘Tell them it is pig, goat or anything, I don’t care, just don’t tell them the truth. My burden is great enough. I cannot share the knowledge that I have denied them their afterlife as well.’
‘This we will do, Golau,’ answered Kraiach.
‘There is one more thing,’ he continued, ‘I ask that we do not take the flesh of any Two-foot, as you call them, unless our very lives depend on it. We must hunt the beast first, or steal rotting meat from scavenged carcasses, as does the hyena, even the dry roots of the gorse bush would taste like honey when compared to the alternative. All this and more we must try, before we reach the bottom and eat the flesh of another. And when this thing is over, it will stop.’
Kraiach nodded his agreement.
‘Then it is agreed,’ said Golau. ‘We will talk no more of this thing. Now we must go.’
They walked back to the others who had put out the fires, an air of mistrust tangible amongst the group as they prepared to climb up the slope to the escarpment. Once again, Kraiach led the group, his strange senses as perceptive as ever, picking out the route to the top as they climbed in the darkness.
----
They pushed hard up the slopes, managing to crest the ridge just before dawn. Finding an enclave of boulders just below the ridgeline, they gathered in the makeshift shelter to get whatever sleep they could before the sun rose, each wrapped in their furs whilst the rocks protected them from the biting winds.
Golau opened his eyes. The sun was high in the sky yet the exhaustion from the night before had helped him sleep past the call of nature’s alarm clock. There was no mist or cloud at this early hour and Golau could see way down the mountain and along the route that they had covered over the black, ash-covered expanse. Turning back around he saw Kraiach standing a little higher up on the crest of the ridge and he walked up to join his unlikely travelling companion in the cold morning air.
Over the past weeks, they had covered hundreds of miles of freezing lifeless glacier, climbed endless mountain cliffs, and traversed a barren waterless desert to reach this final ridge. They had climbed higher than the very clouds in the Sun-god’s sky, and the one common factor that had remained the same throughout the varied landscapes was the fact that they had all been almost devoid of visible life, and though he had no knowledge of what lay before him, he had fully expected that constant to remain. He was wrong and he stood alongside Kraiach gazing in awe at the vista laid out in front of him.
Dropping away dramatically at his feet lay an enormous depression in the ground as far as the eye can see, hundreds of metres deep. Bordered on all sides with sheer rocky cliffs, the entire crater was entirely devoid of ice and snow, and was thickly carpeted with a lush green forest canopy.
Rivers glistened into the distance, meandering slowly through the ancient volcanic caldera before emptying into lakes or disappearing into sinkholes. A huge variety of colours from flowers, plants and bushes, all fed by the rich nutrients of volcanic soil, filled any gaps between the trees and spread across the crater, hugging the lower edges of the surrounding cliffs. Throughout the enormous valley, pockets of steam rose from between the trees climbing high into the sky and eventually adding their individual burdens to the water laden rain clouds above.
Kraiach and Golau were joined by the rest of their colleagues at the edge of the crater, all astounded by the beautiful vision of paradise that lay before them.
‘Surely this is a place of the Gods,’ whispered Afon in awe.
‘It is a place of death,’ answered Kraiach coldly.
‘How do you know?’
‘I know!’
Gafr chewed on a dried strip of meat, and holding out his hand, he offered Golau a share. Golau momentarily caught Kraiach’s eye, unspoken acknowledgement of their agreement the night before.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You’re always hungry,’ said Gafr
‘Not this morning,’ he snapped, and then more gently, ‘I ate well last night, Gafr. You eat it.’ he said. Golau descended back to the rocks to collect his belongings, ignoring the hunger pangs in his belly. Gafr finished his breakfast and followed Golau, oblivious as to the nature of the meat he now picked from between his teeth.
----
Over the weeks, Morlak and Seren grew to know each other better as they followed the coastline northward, to skirt around the mountains to the east of the glacier.
On the way, Morlak had cut a straight branch from a palm like tree and carefully split it down the middle with the edge of his knife. Using the point, he scraped out the soft pith from the core of each half, and then rebound the two halves of wood tightly back together with wet strips of hide to form a hollow pipe. Despite the crudeness of the construction, Seren could hardly contain her excitement when she realized he was making her a rudimentary Swaden. The length was only half as long as Morlak’s, but its use was obvious. Morlak showed her how, by using a fire hardened thin straight branch as a rod and a tiny piece of cloth, she could use sand as an abrasive to smooth the inside of the tube, a job that she carried out religiously each
evening at the fire.
‘Is this okay?’ she asked for what seemed like the thousandth time, handing the tube to Morlak.
‘No!’ he answered again, as he always did.
She huffed with impatience.
‘Why did you not just make the hole bigger when it was in two halves?’ she asked. ‘It would have been so much easier.’
‘The removal of the heart was to allow for the entry of the sand,’ he answered, ‘the hole must be perfectly round and eat into the surrounding hard wood. This takes time.’
Every chance she had she continued her task, forcing sand through the bore with the hide wad on the end of the narrow rod. Eventually, even Morlak was satisfied that the core was straight and true. He held it up to his eye, peering along the perfectly round, smooth barrel of the blowpipe.
‘It will do,’ he said.
Taking one of his darts, he loaded the new blowpipe and aiming at a nearby tree, shot the projectile deep into its trunk.
‘It will do,’ he repeated and went forward to retrieve the dart.
They stopped all the next day to make more darts from the long thorns of nearby bushes and untangled goat hair from the same thorny thickets. Soon Seren had a stock of a dozen darts and spent the rest of the day practicing her technique, easing off only when she could hit the trunk ten metres away eight times from ten. Morlak passed the time building his own large reserve of darts and packed them in the folds of his cape.
The following morning they continued, stopping every so often for Seren to practice on any unsuspecting log that they came across. It was during such a break that Seren asked a question.
‘Morlak,’ she asked, not taking her eyes off the weapon in her hands, ‘can the Swaden kill a man?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘It may be that we have need of the darts to help us when we reach the Baal,’
‘It is not a weapon to kill a Two-foot,’ he said, ‘it will take birds, or small animals such as squirrel.’
‘But do you think it could?’
‘No. It will cause pain, but will not kill.’
She stayed silent chewing on a piece of duck he had killed earlier.
‘Morlak, we need to find a tree.’
‘There are many,’ he said indicating all those around him.
‘No I mean a particular kind of tree, a Mulberry. Do you know what I mean, Mulberry?’
He stared blankly back at her.
‘It is a small tree that grows on the edge of forests, a bushy one that bears red and black fruit,’ she explained.
Morlak’s eyes closed slightly in recognition.
‘The tree of the Myaren has such a fruit,’ he said, ‘but it is too early for the berries.’
‘I don’t want the berries,’ she said, ‘just take me to the tree.’
After a few hours in the nearby forest, they found the bush they were searching for, its shiny metallic leaves reflecting the light in the afternoon sunshine.
‘Yes this is perfect,’ she said dropping her pack to the floor. ‘Help me Morlak, gather as many leaves as you can.’
‘We cannot eat the leaves,’ he said, ‘they will make us sick.’
‘Exactly,’ she replied, ‘that is the point.’
They spent the rest of the day collecting leaves, stripping them from the branches and piling them under one of the capes so they did not blow away in the breeze. When it became dark, they set a fire and continued their task by the light of the flames. Morlak did not seek explanation and Seren did not offer any.
‘Remove all the flowers and even the tiny wood stems,’ she said, ‘I want only the green leaf and nothing else.’
They continued as long as they could into the night until they could do no more. Seren’s fingers hurt because of the stripping, but she went to sleep excited about her idea. At first light, she dispatched Morlak to find two rocks, specific instructions stuck in his head. He searched the rocky shore, finally bringing back a perfectly round stone, worn smooth by the action of countless years of tidal pounding, and a flat dish shaped stone slightly concave in the middle.
‘Perfect!’ she exclaimed when she saw the results of his search, and placed both on the floor. She sat down and placed the flat rock between her legs, and put a large pile of leaves in the depression. Morlak watched with interest.
‘Here goes,’ she said and picking up the round rock started to crush the leaves to a pulp. She pressed, tapped and rolled the rock over the leaves using all her strength to apply pressure without success.
‘Oh this is useless,’ she said half an hour later, throwing the rock to the side.
‘What is it you try?’ he asked.
‘I need the liquid from the leaves,’ she said ‘but it does not come. We have worked so hard for nothing.’ Morlak stared at the leaves and retrieved the stone from the dirt.
‘I will try,’ he said and replaced Seren at the flat stone.
Within moments of applying his brute strength, a tiny drop of white milky liquid appeared beneath the green pulpy mess of leaves.
‘Yes,’ she shouted, ‘that’s it, keep pressing.’
Eventually Morlak stopped, beads of sweat running down his brow and taking the bone bowl from Seren, poured the white liquid into the receptacle. The amount was tiny, a small pool at the bottom, less than the size of his fingernail.
‘It was a lot of work for so little,’ he said, ‘it must taste good.’ He dipped his finger into the liquid, raising it up to his open mouth.
‘Morlak, no!’ screamed Seren and knocked his hand from his mouth just as he placed it to his tongue.
‘Did you taste?’ she said grabbing the side of the Neanderthals head.
‘Why did you...?’
‘Did you taste?’ she screamed.
‘No!’
She backed off.
‘I’m so sorry, Morlak,’ she said, ‘I almost killed you.’
‘How?’
‘I should have told you,’ she said, ‘but I was not sure. The Shaman taught me how, but the leaves have to be right. The liquid is lethal, Morlak, if it is eaten, or enters the bloodstream it can kill a grown man’
Morlak stared at her, absently rubbing his finger on his furs to clean off the residue.
‘Why do you make this Gwenwen?’ he asked using the nearest word he could in his language for death liquid.
‘There are only eight of us in total, ‘she replied, ‘and hundreds of them. We can use this to poison the Baal.’
‘How will you make them eat the Gwenwen?’
‘That’s the beauty of it,’ she said, ‘we don’t have to. It can be carried to them on the wings of the Swaden. ’
He stared at her deep in thought, eventually looking at the empty bowl.
‘We will need more,’ he said.
‘We will,’ she answered, picking up the rock and placing it against his chest.
‘Get crushing.’
----
Throughout the day, they crushed the store of leaves, harvesting the minute amounts of milky liquid squeezed from the veins of the leaves. Eventually, when they exhausted the pile of leaves, Seren carefully took the half-full bowl to the fire, placing it gently on the embers on the edge of the fireplace.
‘Why do you do this?’ asked Morlak.
‘The liquid is too thin,’ she said, ‘it is still poison, but would take hours to kill a man. I need to make it thicker. By heating it up gently, the thin liquid disappears and it leaves a thick sticky paste. This is what I seek.’
She paid the bowl full attention, stirring the liquid with a twig until the consistency thickened to that of honey. At last, she removed the bowl from the fire.
‘It is done,’ she said.
Morlak looked at the ball of sticky white paste, half the size of his clenched fist, lying at the bottom of the bowl. Seren took a small fresh piece of thin animal skin and carefully scooped out the paste, folding the wrap around it and tying it with horsehair twine; she hung it around her neck like a necklac
e.
‘We cannot afford any mistakes with this,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow we will try it out on a beast, but now I am exhausted. We need to sleep.’
For the second night they curled up by the fire at the edge of the forest by the sea, Morlak always semiconscious of the night noises that surrounding them and keeping the fire banked high, protection against the beasts of the night.
----
Morlak shook Seren awake just before dawn.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked sleepily, it was still dark.
‘We must go,’ he said.
‘But we were to hunt with the Gwenwen today,’ she said.
‘There is no time, Kraiach calls. They are in trouble. We must go now.’
‘Okay, I’m coming,’ she mumbled untangling herself from her furs. Within minutes, she was trotting as she tried to keep up with Morlak’s furious pace as the sun edged over the horizon.
----
Chapter 26
Throughout the day, the six pursuers descended the rocky internal slopes of the slumbering volcanic crater. The path they followed, worn deep into the soft volcanic rock by countless feet over thousands of years, wound down the steep slope, doubling back on itself repeatedly like a coiled serpent. They crouched down behind a rocky lip, peering down the next stage, looking for any sign that they had been spotted before continuing their descent.
‘Do you see anything?’ whispered Golau.
‘They would be beneath the trees by now,’ responded Kraiach peering down into the crater. ‘There could be many eyes watching us and we would not know.’
‘I see no other way down, we have no choice,’ said Golau. He stood up and dropped down to the next level as gently and as quietly as he could, spear held in one hand, whilst using other for support as he moved.
For two hours they descended, knees aching with the constant impact. Eventually, the ground levelled out and they walked through swathes of luscious grass growing in the rich volcanic soil. Before them, lay the edge of the dense woodland and they paused to take a drink, examining the strange phenomenon.
‘It is warm,’ said Kraiach removing his thick winter furs, and draping them over one shoulder. His fellow species followed his example. ‘The air is heavy with water.’ As if to confirm his judgment, the heavens opened, pouring a deluge of heavy rain into the crater.